Shannon Messenger

Shannon Messenger studied art at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, assuming she'd end up a Disney animator, before discovering that writing for kids and teens was the part of storytelling she actually loved. Her Sky Fall trilogy (2013-2016), about Vane Weston discovering he's a windwalker with power over weather itself and the girl secretly assigned to protect him, came first and established her instincts for slow-burn romance built on secrets and cliffhanger endings — instincts she then poured into Keeper of the Lost Cities, the middle-grade series that became her flagship. Keeper of the Lost Cities follows Sophie Foster, a twelve-year-old telepath who discovers she's not human but an elf raised in the wrong world, whose unique abilities make her a target the moment she's brought into the hidden elvish Lost Cities. Messenger has built an unusually dense, long-running mythology around Sophie across nine main novels and two plot-relevant novellas so far, blending a Harry Potter-style magic school with heavier themes — memory manipulation, identity, grief — than the sparkly covers suggest, plus a devoted fandom that tracks every reveal. New readers should start with Keeper of the Lost Cities itself and read in strict publication order, including the novellas Unlocked and Unraveled at their numbered points. The tenth and final book, Elysian, is confirmed by title but still being written, with no release date yet.